Hello!
It has recently been pointed out to me that it has been over a month since I blogged, and the best thing I can say in response to this is that it seemed necessary to get on my feet in Leicester and to process more important things in my head first before getting around to sharing them with the world.
Now, however, I am finally starting to adopt a groove and a routine here, so I feel that now will be an opportune time to look back over what's been going on in the past few weeks and to try to give you the highlights, rather than a sprawling account of every inconsequential detail and every immoderate emotion that comes with moving to a totally new place for a year.
Please do forgive me for the delay!
Those of you who follow me on Facebook know that I have been doing a series of posts there called "Adventures in Biscuitry," in which I explore the vast and varied realm of the British cookie. Never have I come across a culture in which dessert is held in higher esteem as a necessity and a right of life, and frankly, this alone guarantees that the British and I are made to get along swimmingly! One of my goals as I go along is to transfer the Biscuitry posts here, and to add elaborations of other splendiferous desserts as I run across them. I'm thinking of setting up a day of the week for these - say, Sweet Tooth Thursdays, perhaps?
For today's post, however, I think I'd best give you all a run-down of where I'm staying, and my general class situation at "uni," the British slang for "university."
I was in Leicester for at least two weeks before anyone made any mention of class actually starting and my having to attend! There was International Welcome Week first, full of events - bus tours of the city, a ceili dance, a talent show night. Then there was Freshers' Week, "freshers" being the Freshman, and evidently British Freshers' Week is very unlike US freshman orientations. First of all, practically the whole school shows up and attends half the events, by way of free entertainment, free pizza, and give-away pens and USB sticks. No rolling into town on the Sunday before classes start here!
As far as I can tell, the main objective of Freshers' Week is to get everybody signed up for more clubs and societies than they can possibly participate in, and to talk about absolutely everything you can do at uni besides go to class or study. It was all terribly fascinating, and, between this and the cookies, and the postgraduate wine-and-cheese receptions for general postgrads, for our specific departments, for those of us with brown hair (kidding! but only on the last one), I was beginning to think that uni in England consisted solely of socializing, pub-going, being fed free wine by the faculty, joining clubs, going dancing, and occasionally eating Indian food (which it turns out I don't hate).
Eventually, in early October, a rather vague email instructed me that I had to attend an Induction for my course of study. It turns out that the induction is an official day set aside for doing what US professors take care of in the first twenty minutes of class on that dreadful Monday after you've just rolled into town. Here's the syllabus, here's the course website, here's your advisor, now read the fool handout before you ask me about it, child! That kind of thing. Only rather more helpful and polite. This single day of induction counts as your course time for the first week, and, at the end of it, they tell you your first reading assignment and finally, finally someone sees fit to mention that you actually do have to attend class eventually, and that it actually does have an assigned room and timetable which you should probably know, come to think of it. This is, by this point, weirdly reassuring knowledge, as if to convince you that you have, after all, arrived at a school, rather than an extended social network of youngish people who like free wine and giveaway office supplies. (Though really, who doesn't like free wine and giveaway office supplies?)
And so my course schedule reads as follows - or, really, I should call it my "module" schedule or "timetable," to be all British about things. "Module" here refers to the entire course, rather than to a particular sub-unit or topic of the class, as you might otherwise expect. "Course" is not an individual class, but your entire course of study - in my case, my course is the MA in Victorian Studies. "Class" can be used as in the US, to refer either to the whole class over the course of a semester, or to each individual class session, e.g., "for that class I have Professor A," or, "class is cancelled today." So, my schedule is:
Wednesdays, 10-noon: EN 7001: Bibliography, Research Methods, and Writing Skills for Postgraduates.
Wednesdays, 2-4: HS 7499: Victorian Society
Every other Thursday, 10-noon: The Brontes
Or, in plain translation:
Every Wed: How to use the library (actually an extremely helpful class)
Every Wed: Long list of terrifying Victorian statistics that somehow is totally fascinating anyway
Every-other-Thursday: Utter bliss, somehow accruing academic credit anyway.
Let me explain that last one a bit.
I have an entire course/module entirely on the Brontes. There are three students in it - all girls. We are such a small class that, when we were accidentally double-booked in our classroom, the professor didn't even bother to apply for a new room but just decided that from now on, we hold class in her office. Her office is on the thirteenth floor of the Attenborough tower on campus, which means that we have a fantastic view of all Leicester spread out below us. Quaint rows of cookie-cutter red brick houses, looking almost as if they were cut from paper and had sprung up like a children's pop-up book, extend until mounded green trees take over, and these run up the basin-shaped land, punctuated every so often by an old white smokestack from the true Victorian era, and then, at the edges of this bowl in which Leicester sits, there rise misty green hills-upon-hills, fading out into the sky, and suggesting that somewhere, perhaps, picturesque English countryside is rolling out for miles undisturbed. One almost couldn't ask for a view that looks more like it came from a BBC miniseries.
In this utterly apropos setting, we are asked to read one Bronte novel every two weeks, then to discuss amongst our four selves for two hours, while eating tea and cakes. (See? Sweets again. They're ubiquitous. Incorrigible. Omnipresent. Fantastic.) And, somewhere, somehow, some blessed soul not only calls this graduate school, but some other blessed soul pays for me to call this graduate school. I am in a certain species of earthly heaven, and truly grateful to God for this wonderful opportunity.
That said, it isn't flawless. I still struggle with missing people from back home quite a bit, and I still have my daily frustrations with a foreign culture - strange grocery stores, absurdly small kitchen space, and the most bewildering array of laundry soaps ever, none of which seem to have any definable link to ordinary US detergent.
On the whole, my flat is reasonably pleasant, though. I am in student accommodations, or, basically, the dorms, but they're a step above just the one-long-hallway dorms of which I have relatively unpleasant memories from freshman year. There are four individual hallways on each floor, and each individual hallway is one "flat" containing six rooms and a shared kitchen and bathroom. Four of my five flatmates are Chinese, and the remaining one is Vietnamese, so I don't always understand the animated conversations taking place in my kitchen, but they are all very nice girls, and we are getting to know each other a bit better.
My main frustration is the kitchen itself. We are provided with a refrigerator slightly shorter than I am, and perhaps two feet wide, to accommodate the food for all six people, and it is maddening to try to cram your groceries into any available nook or cranny. The stoves, also, are roughly large enough for use by an American Girl doll, and the kitchen cabinets and windows have all clearly been arranged in a way that will maximize the potential for banging heads and for rendering all other doors and windows temporarily either un-open-able or un-close-able. The hot tap turns out water so hot that it steams (the shower, on the other hand, persists in being a barely tolerable lukewarm), and none of the drains seem to have understood that it is their function in life to get rid of water, rather than to retain it indefinitely in the sink. Failing this, however, the tiny countertops, bizarrely placed outlets, and absurdly low ovens are all a perfect model of functionality and ease...
However, one must make the best of such things, and it could be said that at least I have a kitchen.
And so, there is your first real blog-taste of my experience in Leicester. More updates to come - the goal right now is once a week, but that may not happen immediately.
Love to you all!
From: http://arttattler.com/archiverussiancourtprotocol.html
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Thursday, September 12, 2013
From Heathrow to My Temporary Room
To continue from my previous post:
After fetching my bags at the airport, I came out into a maze of taxi drivers, all standing there holding up signs with people's names written on them. I had pre-ordered a taxi and knew that one should be waiting for me, but I passed what seemed like a million signs, typed on iPads, handwritten on the backs of papers, neatly printed out, underneath a million bored faces and above a million blue uniform suits, and not one of the names was mine. Shoving my two towers of stacked baggage and looking lost, I turned around to review the entire maze again, and a small older lady in a bright yellow shirt nearly ran into me.
"Are you a student?" she said, almost immediately and with great enthusiasm.
"Y-yes," I stammered, wondering exactly how she knew (well, besides the utterly lost expression). I cleared my jet-fogged brain and read her shirt: "Meet and Greet!" In her hands was an orange paper, writ large with the words, "Student? Need help?"
It turns out she was part of a Christian ministry called Friends International, which organizes greeters for arriving international students. She handed me a little guidebook to life in the UK, complete with an email to contact the "Friends" in your area, and helped me figure out the process by which the taxi drivers line up. Since I was 15 minutes before the time for which I had ordered my taxi, she suggested that my driver probably wasn't there yet, and showed me the "Meeting Point," so labeled by a large sign on the airport ceiling. I thanked her profusely and stood where appointed.
My taxi driver met me there with ease, and helped me roll my luggage to the car. He cautioned me that what would ordinarily be a twenty minute drive into central London would instead take closer to an hour, and he was right. It wasn't bad, though. Being driven on the wrong side of the road was, of course, still quite odd, but not so terrifying as the first time when I was in the coach (bus) in Scotland. The very first time, you feel as if you are constantly headed into incoming traffic!
The drive in was green, sunny, and otherwise unremarkable. I do love the British (I say British because it applied in Scotland as well as in England) proclivity for lace curtains in windows, though. It makes even the shabbier cottages you pass look so charming and storybookish.
The driver dropped me off at the Fulbright Orientation accommodations, where I arrived earlier than most students, and went through quite an ordeal getting my internet connected, as both the Ethernet port and cable they had provided for me were broken.
While wandering the building, I met another early arrival student, Julia, and, finding confidence in numbers, we set off to find lunch in the area around our accommodation, and, having found cheap sandwiches, ate them in a peaceful little garden.
Especially on that lovely sunny day, the whole atmosphere was so quaint, so cute, so...entirely what one might expect of a quiet autumn afternoon in London. It really is surprising what illusions are happily fulfilled, sometimes, and found not to have been very illusionary at all.
The day ended with a pub meet-up for the scholars, at which point I was entirely too tired to learn anyone's name. By that point, I started desperately missing the people from home, too, and it made me rather unwilling to socialize. But I think that what I will do is narrate the first week's events for the next few days, then go back and track my mental-emotional state in a separate post, to keep the length manageable.
Love you all!
Next up will be probably a post combining the first two full days of orientation - today was by far the more interesting. I met titled minor nobility and an ambassador, today! Find out which ones and where and why by coming back next time.
After fetching my bags at the airport, I came out into a maze of taxi drivers, all standing there holding up signs with people's names written on them. I had pre-ordered a taxi and knew that one should be waiting for me, but I passed what seemed like a million signs, typed on iPads, handwritten on the backs of papers, neatly printed out, underneath a million bored faces and above a million blue uniform suits, and not one of the names was mine. Shoving my two towers of stacked baggage and looking lost, I turned around to review the entire maze again, and a small older lady in a bright yellow shirt nearly ran into me.
"Are you a student?" she said, almost immediately and with great enthusiasm.
"Y-yes," I stammered, wondering exactly how she knew (well, besides the utterly lost expression). I cleared my jet-fogged brain and read her shirt: "Meet and Greet!" In her hands was an orange paper, writ large with the words, "Student? Need help?"
It turns out she was part of a Christian ministry called Friends International, which organizes greeters for arriving international students. She handed me a little guidebook to life in the UK, complete with an email to contact the "Friends" in your area, and helped me figure out the process by which the taxi drivers line up. Since I was 15 minutes before the time for which I had ordered my taxi, she suggested that my driver probably wasn't there yet, and showed me the "Meeting Point," so labeled by a large sign on the airport ceiling. I thanked her profusely and stood where appointed.
My taxi driver met me there with ease, and helped me roll my luggage to the car. He cautioned me that what would ordinarily be a twenty minute drive into central London would instead take closer to an hour, and he was right. It wasn't bad, though. Being driven on the wrong side of the road was, of course, still quite odd, but not so terrifying as the first time when I was in the coach (bus) in Scotland. The very first time, you feel as if you are constantly headed into incoming traffic!
The drive in was green, sunny, and otherwise unremarkable. I do love the British (I say British because it applied in Scotland as well as in England) proclivity for lace curtains in windows, though. It makes even the shabbier cottages you pass look so charming and storybookish.
The driver dropped me off at the Fulbright Orientation accommodations, where I arrived earlier than most students, and went through quite an ordeal getting my internet connected, as both the Ethernet port and cable they had provided for me were broken.
While wandering the building, I met another early arrival student, Julia, and, finding confidence in numbers, we set off to find lunch in the area around our accommodation, and, having found cheap sandwiches, ate them in a peaceful little garden.
Especially on that lovely sunny day, the whole atmosphere was so quaint, so cute, so...entirely what one might expect of a quiet autumn afternoon in London. It really is surprising what illusions are happily fulfilled, sometimes, and found not to have been very illusionary at all.
The day ended with a pub meet-up for the scholars, at which point I was entirely too tired to learn anyone's name. By that point, I started desperately missing the people from home, too, and it made me rather unwilling to socialize. But I think that what I will do is narrate the first week's events for the next few days, then go back and track my mental-emotional state in a separate post, to keep the length manageable.
Love you all!
Next up will be probably a post combining the first two full days of orientation - today was by far the more interesting. I met titled minor nobility and an ambassador, today! Find out which ones and where and why by coming back next time.
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
The Transit and Arrival
Hello! First of all, I'd like to reassure all of you who haven't seen on Facebook or email that I am indeed safe, well, and in England!
My flight into London Heathrow was uneventful in the good way, though I did have a few memorable moments in airports throughout the journey.
In New York, after I managed to lug my bags to the international gates, I happened to sit down next to a lovely great-grandmother named Mary, who also, it turns out, travels and blogs. She and her twin sister Martha have been all kinds of places over the years, and what started with her wondering where there was a restroom and me wondering where there was food led to a lovely conversation about our respective adventures. You can follow her adventures (if she doesn't mind my sharing) at www.the-traveling-twins.blogspot.com.
About the time that first class started boarding, I got up to do some ballet stretches by the window, since it was effectively the last time I would be able to move for six-and-a-half hours, and while I did so, a Jewish man stood up further down the window and appeared to do some kind of prayer. Pardon my complete cultural ignorance of Jewish custom, here, but he appeared perhaps particularly Orthodox or Hassidic, with a long black coat and large black hat, a full beard, and the curled locks of hair by his ears. He took off half his coat, rolled up his sleeve, and wrapped a complex set of leather straps around his bare arm and over his head, then stood before the window with his arms upraised. I stood at a short distance, watching his deep calm as I bent sideways over my leg, propped up at ninety degrees on the window ledge. There seemed to be something introspective and self-sufficient about him, as if he were content with conversations and experiences held inside himself, and therefore observed and perhaps enjoyed the passing world, but could also easily drop it from his mind for bigger things.
On the plane, I got an aisle seat, which is fortunate as I really can't sit down for six hours at a time, and people do make such a fuss when I have crawl over them every hour or two. I actually fell asleep for a little bit, with the aid of a lovely mix CD I had with me. First time I've ever slept on a plane, and it did much to improve my mood upon arrival.
After the jetway got stuck in midair about halfway to the airplane, and the engineers came and repaired it for us, I had to pass customs, which is a thing not lightly done in any country, I am coming to discover. There was a separate line just for International Students, and so I joined it. The vast bulk of the other students in line were Asian, many Chinese as I could see by their red passports and the English labels on their Chinese health certificates.
Having a long time in line, I observed all of the non-student comers to the non-UK/EU passport line, and learned that, while of course no country is clearly distinguishable all the time, by and large one can identify other Americans as the people with the blue passports and too much luggage. Above my line, there were scrolling screens and televisions that aired short programs, without the sound, sponsored by VisitBritain. Sometimes I have heard Americans wonder why things like Wills and Kate and the monarchy, or old castles and quaint villages, can become such a big deal to people in the US. Surely, the subtext runs, those are very stereotypical things to excite you about modern Britain? Well, if they are, then I can tell you conclusively that stereotypical things must sell, because the VisitBritain short films I saw detailed various areas of England, in all its pastoral, castle-filled, Royal Wedding glory.
However, the screen with still slides was actually my favorite. Mostly it was dull information about which documents students needed to show to pass customs, but one screen warned of "Detector Dogs at the UK Border," and featured a large picture of a thoroughly goofy Springer Spaniel, standing next to someone's bag with it's pink tongue lolling out of its amber-eyed, droopy-eared face, and its tail half-wagging behind its liver-and-white spotted body. It was the least intimidating, friendliest photo of a drug-sniffing dog that you could ever imagine!
After customs, I went to collect my bags. I found the carousel marked, and started to get a sinking feeling as minute after minute went by and the same bags, none of which were mine, trundled 'round and 'round. After about half an hour, I worked myself into a state of some panic, and started wandering anxiously around to all of the carousels. On the way, I ran across an American Airlines kiosk, where apparently American had already pulled my bags and had them waiting for me, I suppose because I had taken so long to get through customs. At any rate, I strapped all my four bags together and off we went.
To be continued...
(Time for shower and bed, here.)
My flight into London Heathrow was uneventful in the good way, though I did have a few memorable moments in airports throughout the journey.
In New York, after I managed to lug my bags to the international gates, I happened to sit down next to a lovely great-grandmother named Mary, who also, it turns out, travels and blogs. She and her twin sister Martha have been all kinds of places over the years, and what started with her wondering where there was a restroom and me wondering where there was food led to a lovely conversation about our respective adventures. You can follow her adventures (if she doesn't mind my sharing) at www.the-traveling-twins.blogspot.com.
About the time that first class started boarding, I got up to do some ballet stretches by the window, since it was effectively the last time I would be able to move for six-and-a-half hours, and while I did so, a Jewish man stood up further down the window and appeared to do some kind of prayer. Pardon my complete cultural ignorance of Jewish custom, here, but he appeared perhaps particularly Orthodox or Hassidic, with a long black coat and large black hat, a full beard, and the curled locks of hair by his ears. He took off half his coat, rolled up his sleeve, and wrapped a complex set of leather straps around his bare arm and over his head, then stood before the window with his arms upraised. I stood at a short distance, watching his deep calm as I bent sideways over my leg, propped up at ninety degrees on the window ledge. There seemed to be something introspective and self-sufficient about him, as if he were content with conversations and experiences held inside himself, and therefore observed and perhaps enjoyed the passing world, but could also easily drop it from his mind for bigger things.
On the plane, I got an aisle seat, which is fortunate as I really can't sit down for six hours at a time, and people do make such a fuss when I have crawl over them every hour or two. I actually fell asleep for a little bit, with the aid of a lovely mix CD I had with me. First time I've ever slept on a plane, and it did much to improve my mood upon arrival.
After the jetway got stuck in midair about halfway to the airplane, and the engineers came and repaired it for us, I had to pass customs, which is a thing not lightly done in any country, I am coming to discover. There was a separate line just for International Students, and so I joined it. The vast bulk of the other students in line were Asian, many Chinese as I could see by their red passports and the English labels on their Chinese health certificates.
Having a long time in line, I observed all of the non-student comers to the non-UK/EU passport line, and learned that, while of course no country is clearly distinguishable all the time, by and large one can identify other Americans as the people with the blue passports and too much luggage. Above my line, there were scrolling screens and televisions that aired short programs, without the sound, sponsored by VisitBritain. Sometimes I have heard Americans wonder why things like Wills and Kate and the monarchy, or old castles and quaint villages, can become such a big deal to people in the US. Surely, the subtext runs, those are very stereotypical things to excite you about modern Britain? Well, if they are, then I can tell you conclusively that stereotypical things must sell, because the VisitBritain short films I saw detailed various areas of England, in all its pastoral, castle-filled, Royal Wedding glory.
However, the screen with still slides was actually my favorite. Mostly it was dull information about which documents students needed to show to pass customs, but one screen warned of "Detector Dogs at the UK Border," and featured a large picture of a thoroughly goofy Springer Spaniel, standing next to someone's bag with it's pink tongue lolling out of its amber-eyed, droopy-eared face, and its tail half-wagging behind its liver-and-white spotted body. It was the least intimidating, friendliest photo of a drug-sniffing dog that you could ever imagine!
After customs, I went to collect my bags. I found the carousel marked, and started to get a sinking feeling as minute after minute went by and the same bags, none of which were mine, trundled 'round and 'round. After about half an hour, I worked myself into a state of some panic, and started wandering anxiously around to all of the carousels. On the way, I ran across an American Airlines kiosk, where apparently American had already pulled my bags and had them waiting for me, I suppose because I had taken so long to get through customs. At any rate, I strapped all my four bags together and off we went.
To be continued...
(Time for shower and bed, here.)
Monday, September 9, 2013
Off on the Grand Adventure!
In my brother's bedroom, my two rolling suitcases are packed and locked, and my two carry-ons are waiting for last minute filling with my toiletries and my purse.
I have packed everything I will need for a year in two medium-size rolling bags, one rather large carry-on, and one rather reasonably-sized carry-on, which, for a Texan woman, is a Herculean accomplishment. I suspect it may be aided by the fact that my clothes and shoes are all slightly smaller than average. Originally, I had packed a very large rolling bag, but it had to be unpacked and returned when I discovered that, far from lifting it, I could hardly manage to roll it when fully stuffed, seeing as it weighed something over half of what I do.
It is difficult for me not to compare this English adventure with my time in Belgium, but I try not to. I really had very little impetus to go to Belgium, besides the fact that I had heard that study abroad was good for both the soul and the resume, and I had been told that Scottish brogue did not qualify as acquiring a second language. And, while I did have some lovely excursions on the continent, I really did not much enjoy my time in Brussels, and it has given rather a bad taste to "study abroad" in my mind. So, I am consciously attempting to think of this as My Grand English Adventure, a thing much more exciting and charming than mere study abroad.
And really, I think that this time around, things will go much better. I am actually excited the night before, rather than shaking in fear. Oh, I'm nervous, of course - anyone would be, on relocating to strange climes for a year. But there are several thoughts which never cease to calm my fears...
First, and foremost, I have the prayers of many dear friends and the grace of a perfect God going with me. How easy it is to feel the Lord's love when what seems like a thousand friends are ranged as my prayer warriors, asking for my safety and my sanity and that I be used as a light to others.
Second, it must be admitted that the (ostensible) lack of a language barrier comforts me. While I know that British English and American English are probably more different than I have yet realized, the essential fact is that I should be able to communicate coherently with the average person on the street, without having to rack my brain for obscure verb tenses and odd vocabulary words not taught in class. I had a thoroughly useless habit when speaking French of falling back into Latin when I lost the French word for a thing...a dreadful side effect of private school, I suppose, is that it becomes slightly inconceivable that the whole world has not been educated in basic Latin.
Third, I am simply thrilled by all the descriptions of the MA program I am going into! I get to roll around in reams of details about English country houses and Victorian novels and the social status of children and all that sort of thing that turns me inside out with mental delight.
Oh, AND I get to spend more than a week in London!
That's what I'm doing first, actually. I go to Fulbright Orientation, then I have a week in London before my accommodation in Leicester opens its doors. And so I intend to see Westminster Abbey and the Tower of London, the Victoria and Albert museum and the Windsor Castle Victorian doll collection, the Thames and Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament and everything! I want to ride a double-decker bus and go into Harrod's and take the tube and wander in bookstores and generally soak in history until I am drunk on stories.
And so I and my four suitcases (and one loveable, long-suffering, and currently rather squashed stuffed pony) are about to set out on our Grand UK Adventure.
My friends, relations, and loves of all descriptions - I welcome your prayers, your suggestions, your communications, and your thoughts. Thank you for all you do for me -
Now read along and (almost) come with me!
I have packed everything I will need for a year in two medium-size rolling bags, one rather large carry-on, and one rather reasonably-sized carry-on, which, for a Texan woman, is a Herculean accomplishment. I suspect it may be aided by the fact that my clothes and shoes are all slightly smaller than average. Originally, I had packed a very large rolling bag, but it had to be unpacked and returned when I discovered that, far from lifting it, I could hardly manage to roll it when fully stuffed, seeing as it weighed something over half of what I do.
It is difficult for me not to compare this English adventure with my time in Belgium, but I try not to. I really had very little impetus to go to Belgium, besides the fact that I had heard that study abroad was good for both the soul and the resume, and I had been told that Scottish brogue did not qualify as acquiring a second language. And, while I did have some lovely excursions on the continent, I really did not much enjoy my time in Brussels, and it has given rather a bad taste to "study abroad" in my mind. So, I am consciously attempting to think of this as My Grand English Adventure, a thing much more exciting and charming than mere study abroad.
And really, I think that this time around, things will go much better. I am actually excited the night before, rather than shaking in fear. Oh, I'm nervous, of course - anyone would be, on relocating to strange climes for a year. But there are several thoughts which never cease to calm my fears...
First, and foremost, I have the prayers of many dear friends and the grace of a perfect God going with me. How easy it is to feel the Lord's love when what seems like a thousand friends are ranged as my prayer warriors, asking for my safety and my sanity and that I be used as a light to others.
Second, it must be admitted that the (ostensible) lack of a language barrier comforts me. While I know that British English and American English are probably more different than I have yet realized, the essential fact is that I should be able to communicate coherently with the average person on the street, without having to rack my brain for obscure verb tenses and odd vocabulary words not taught in class. I had a thoroughly useless habit when speaking French of falling back into Latin when I lost the French word for a thing...a dreadful side effect of private school, I suppose, is that it becomes slightly inconceivable that the whole world has not been educated in basic Latin.
Third, I am simply thrilled by all the descriptions of the MA program I am going into! I get to roll around in reams of details about English country houses and Victorian novels and the social status of children and all that sort of thing that turns me inside out with mental delight.
Oh, AND I get to spend more than a week in London!
That's what I'm doing first, actually. I go to Fulbright Orientation, then I have a week in London before my accommodation in Leicester opens its doors. And so I intend to see Westminster Abbey and the Tower of London, the Victoria and Albert museum and the Windsor Castle Victorian doll collection, the Thames and Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament and everything! I want to ride a double-decker bus and go into Harrod's and take the tube and wander in bookstores and generally soak in history until I am drunk on stories.
And so I and my four suitcases (and one loveable, long-suffering, and currently rather squashed stuffed pony) are about to set out on our Grand UK Adventure.
My friends, relations, and loves of all descriptions - I welcome your prayers, your suggestions, your communications, and your thoughts. Thank you for all you do for me -
Now read along and (almost) come with me!
Monday, August 12, 2013
In Britain I Shall Be
Well, it does seem to be mid-way through August, and this means that I am facing fairly imminent departure for England!
This shall once again become a sort of travel or study abroad blog, as I prepare for my 10 months or so pursuing my Masters degree in Victorian Studies at the University of Leicester, UK. I learned today that Leicester is in the region of England called the East Midlands, or, for you non-Anglophiles, pretty much smack dab in the middle of central England. I've heard it's not far from the Lake District of Coleridge-and-Wordsworthian fame, so at some point I definitely intend to make a stop there.
(In passing, isn't Wordsworth the most exceptionally apt name for a poet?)
In preparation for my English experience, I've been straightening out quite a bit of paperwork and beginning to assemble a packing list. When I went abroad to Belgium and briefly to Scotland before, I quickly learned that, to a native Texan,
all of Europe only has one temperature: cold. It's really only a matter of cold or colder, or perhaps of utterly frigid, as in Bruges in February. I do not, in any other case, lump the entirety of the British Isles and the Continent into one indistinguishable unit, but I am operating on the assumption that the weather in any and all of the above is what I would consider to be winter, year-round. The unfortunate implication of this is that I must pack more sweaters than ever I cared to own, and the unfortunate fact about this is that sweaters take up room. If one wanted to study abroad with optimal luggage space, a tropical destination would certainly be the way to go!
On the whole, of course, I suspect the sweaters will be quite worth the effort, when I start my year delving deep into the lives of the Victorians while based on their own proper turf. The biggest drawback at this point is that I am almost preemptively lonely for my dear friends and family! 10 months will pass so quickly, yet right now there are also ways in which it seems nearly interminable. To my lovely readers and world-wide supporters, your prayers are requested for my sanity in preparation, my safety in travel, and my sentimentality for my loved ones at all times.
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Don't Close Your Eyes...
Isn't it the strangest thing when, going about your day cheerfully, you suddenly find yourself singing just a single snatch of a song?
There's a phrase, just a few words or a set of striking chords, and for no evident reason it sings itself in the back of your mind, over and over.
When this happens to me the song always seems to be unrelated to what I'm doing, and often even to what I'm thinking. Sometimes I remember the words slightly incorrectly, and then I spend the rest of the day trying to place what song they're from. They're rarely words from the chorus, but sometimes. A few weeks ago, I found myself singing a phrase I couldn't turn up anywhere on Google, and I finally resorted to combing my music collection looking for anything remotely in the right genre.
I found the song, but the oddest thing is what also often happens with these random recollections - it was a song I hadn't heard in months. Sometimes I wonder if perhaps it's all a trick of my subconscious, if I've heard the tail end of something on the radio recently, or the relevant snatch played in a store, perhaps. But sometimes I know that cannot be the case.
This song snatch from a couple weeks ago came, it turned out, off of an album I downloaded from an independent gothic artist six months or more ago, and hadn't listened to since then. It just sung its way into my head some day, and stayed there...(and I was rather glad, because I had forgotten all about the beautiful goth album, which I still quite like. I will quite seriously try listening to anything but rap.)
Anyway, today's edition was another song I had forgotten the existence of, and so it was beautiful to rediscover it today.
I found myself randomly singing a breathy, easy, soft "Don't close your eyes..."
Just that. Peaceful, as if soft summer sunset lights were glowing through moving white curtains. It made me smile to sing it, but I could not for the life of me place it.
Google was not immediately helpful, and I struggled for hours faking the next words until I finally found it -
It's a compelling corruption of the chorus to Taylor Swift and the Civil Wars' "Safe and Sound," from the Hunger Games movie, which I have never seen. I remember watching the "Safe and Sound" video, though, loving its soft, vintage colors, thinking it was an awfully sad yet comforting song, beautiful, far away and yet raw.
The line there says:
"Just close your eyes / the sun is going down / you'll be alright / no one can hurt you now. / Come morning light / you and I'll be safe and sound."
It seemed an odd choice for my head to make for me, lately. I've been feeling a lot more like Taylor Swift's catchy, party-on and live free tune "22," frankly! But perhaps that's why I switched the words...
The original "just close your eyes" is a waiting voice, one that quietly hides itself and wishes nothing was coming. One that is overwhelmed.
"Don't close your eyes" is the voice of quiet, anticipatory joy that doesn't want to miss a minute of the wonder surrounding it.
As I come into the last few months of my senior year here at TU, every moment feels precious. Every spring breeze (or, you know, frigid spring raindrop) is one of the last I will feel on campus as an undergrad student. Every all-night chat or all-day coffee outing or interminable text-messaging spree or random outing to the country with friends is a jewel crowning my final undergrad days - an almost-last opportunity to do what's been done a million times before in exactly the same way or to try something I always planed to do and hadn't gotten around to.
With a plan for next year, a fair amount of scholastic satisfaction now, ever-deepening relations with the best friends in the universe (in and out of Tulsa!), and with a greater amount of peace and assurance in Christ than I've felt for most of my slightly-neurotic college career, I feel the security of the "safe and sound" bit.
Perhaps it only remains for me to smile as I did when singing, and to never close my waiting eyes...
http://youtu.be/RzhAS_GnJIc
There's a phrase, just a few words or a set of striking chords, and for no evident reason it sings itself in the back of your mind, over and over.
When this happens to me the song always seems to be unrelated to what I'm doing, and often even to what I'm thinking. Sometimes I remember the words slightly incorrectly, and then I spend the rest of the day trying to place what song they're from. They're rarely words from the chorus, but sometimes. A few weeks ago, I found myself singing a phrase I couldn't turn up anywhere on Google, and I finally resorted to combing my music collection looking for anything remotely in the right genre.
I found the song, but the oddest thing is what also often happens with these random recollections - it was a song I hadn't heard in months. Sometimes I wonder if perhaps it's all a trick of my subconscious, if I've heard the tail end of something on the radio recently, or the relevant snatch played in a store, perhaps. But sometimes I know that cannot be the case.
This song snatch from a couple weeks ago came, it turned out, off of an album I downloaded from an independent gothic artist six months or more ago, and hadn't listened to since then. It just sung its way into my head some day, and stayed there...(and I was rather glad, because I had forgotten all about the beautiful goth album, which I still quite like. I will quite seriously try listening to anything but rap.)
Anyway, today's edition was another song I had forgotten the existence of, and so it was beautiful to rediscover it today.
I found myself randomly singing a breathy, easy, soft "Don't close your eyes..."
Just that. Peaceful, as if soft summer sunset lights were glowing through moving white curtains. It made me smile to sing it, but I could not for the life of me place it.
Google was not immediately helpful, and I struggled for hours faking the next words until I finally found it -
It's a compelling corruption of the chorus to Taylor Swift and the Civil Wars' "Safe and Sound," from the Hunger Games movie, which I have never seen. I remember watching the "Safe and Sound" video, though, loving its soft, vintage colors, thinking it was an awfully sad yet comforting song, beautiful, far away and yet raw.
The line there says:
"Just close your eyes / the sun is going down / you'll be alright / no one can hurt you now. / Come morning light / you and I'll be safe and sound."
It seemed an odd choice for my head to make for me, lately. I've been feeling a lot more like Taylor Swift's catchy, party-on and live free tune "22," frankly! But perhaps that's why I switched the words...
The original "just close your eyes" is a waiting voice, one that quietly hides itself and wishes nothing was coming. One that is overwhelmed.
"Don't close your eyes" is the voice of quiet, anticipatory joy that doesn't want to miss a minute of the wonder surrounding it.
As I come into the last few months of my senior year here at TU, every moment feels precious. Every spring breeze (or, you know, frigid spring raindrop) is one of the last I will feel on campus as an undergrad student. Every all-night chat or all-day coffee outing or interminable text-messaging spree or random outing to the country with friends is a jewel crowning my final undergrad days - an almost-last opportunity to do what's been done a million times before in exactly the same way or to try something I always planed to do and hadn't gotten around to.
With a plan for next year, a fair amount of scholastic satisfaction now, ever-deepening relations with the best friends in the universe (in and out of Tulsa!), and with a greater amount of peace and assurance in Christ than I've felt for most of my slightly-neurotic college career, I feel the security of the "safe and sound" bit.
Perhaps it only remains for me to smile as I did when singing, and to never close my waiting eyes...
http://youtu.be/RzhAS_GnJIc
Monday, March 4, 2013
Methinks I'm about to be Brilliant...
I think I have just had the brainwave that not only am I wordy, I am mobile and wordy! Oh, this could be genius. It's like mobile Facebook, but better.
Test-posting from my phone, y'all!
Test-posting from my phone, y'all!
Hey, Look - It's Me!
So, a couple of weeks ago, someone pointed out to me that if I open a different browser, I can sign into the account that lets me post to this blog without logging out my school and personal accounts in my other browser session (which I can never close because I am a tab-a-holic), and I think this advice is basically genius because it removes the chief obstacle to my posting here.
Yes; I have been stiffing you all because I am too lazy to log out of two email accounts and into a third.
But, on the plus side, I've kind of also been doing things like applying to grad schools and having interviews and trying to distill a paper proposal for my senior project, so we could, objectively speaking, say that I've been too busy to write.
Which sounds ever so much better than that I was too lazy to hit a few keystrokes.
That said, hello!
I've been having some thoughts about thoughts, lately. Which could sound terribly academic and abstruse and "meta," if I wanted it to, but I'm rapidly coming to despise that sort of arcane nonsense, and so I will say instead that it is actually born of very concrete and frustrating experience.
Like I said, I have been attempting to put together a one-to-two page project proposal for my senior project. More to the point, I have been busily engaged in the process of not-writing a single page for three weeks. And it isn't because I've been lolling about (well, except for the one afternoon I curled up in the sunshine on the floor like a cat, but everyone enjoys Sabbath rest in a different way...).
No - it's because I've been thinking.
About coffee.
My thoughts are like coffee.
They require percolation before they may be deemed ready for consumption.
Once percolated, they can be consumed black, if you insist, but they'll really be better if stirred up a bit and sweetened with cream and sugar.
And you see, the problem with a paper proposal, and the reason why I detest the words almost as much as "annotated bibliography," is that a paper proposal wants to know what direction you are going to go for the rest of your paper.
"It's just an overview," says my advisor, but the simple fact is, (perhaps I'm doing this wrong), I haven't the faintest idea where my paper is headed until I've immersed myself in the research for a while and come up with about eight possible directions and then researched some more and followed a tangent and scribbled down a whole bunch of ideas very illegibly around the sides of a paper and tried to write an overall proposal or thesis at least three times. Then, and only then, may I be able to present you with something like an adequate picture of what I want to write about.
Which still, by the way, may not be entirely the same as what I end up writing about.
I understand that research should have direction, but for some reason, my head insists on thinking about things backwards.
I never start out with one definitive question to answer in research, because I find that the problem is that somebody has inevitably already answered it. And since quoting the entirety of somebody else's text is, it would seem, academically discouraged, I am always left with the sad state of an answered question and a defunct paper topic.
Call me a true child of the liberal arts, but if I wanted answers to my questions, I'd have studied math! (Well, and if I'd ever learned my multiplication tables.)
No - what I want are not answers, even, but connections. I don't want just answers - I want new ways to think about other people's answers. I want to raise questions, not answers. I'd like to think that I can make people think about other people's thoughts...which is really just a long-winded way of saying I like to suggest slightly fractious and unorthodox ideas, throw them carelessly out on the winds of dialogue, and see who bites, and how hard, while I stuff my face with candy bars in the corner.
But, in order to do this, I find that I must know other people's ideas first, and in sufficient quantity to begin yanking them out of their respective books (or fields or traditions or disciplines or specialties) and tying them together into something that approximates a decent picture of what History was actually like...every bit as complicated and inter-disciplinary and non-bullet-pointed as our modern world.
I can give you a page of proposal before my research...if you want me to make it up, and turn in something completely different.
But, if you want to know what I really think about something complex, in academics or in life, give me time, and let me play outside the box for a while.
When I've bunny-trailed and false-started and flipped out and panned out, when I've stained the margins with every kind of commentary and crumb, then I will be able to tell you what research I am going to use, what more I need to read, and what I am really going to write about.
I cannot have thoughts on a schedule.
But I will have thoughts eventually. Adequate stewing, adequate brewing.
Yes; I have been stiffing you all because I am too lazy to log out of two email accounts and into a third.
But, on the plus side, I've kind of also been doing things like applying to grad schools and having interviews and trying to distill a paper proposal for my senior project, so we could, objectively speaking, say that I've been too busy to write.
Which sounds ever so much better than that I was too lazy to hit a few keystrokes.
That said, hello!
I've been having some thoughts about thoughts, lately. Which could sound terribly academic and abstruse and "meta," if I wanted it to, but I'm rapidly coming to despise that sort of arcane nonsense, and so I will say instead that it is actually born of very concrete and frustrating experience.
Like I said, I have been attempting to put together a one-to-two page project proposal for my senior project. More to the point, I have been busily engaged in the process of not-writing a single page for three weeks. And it isn't because I've been lolling about (well, except for the one afternoon I curled up in the sunshine on the floor like a cat, but everyone enjoys Sabbath rest in a different way...).
No - it's because I've been thinking.
About coffee.
My thoughts are like coffee.
They require percolation before they may be deemed ready for consumption.
Once percolated, they can be consumed black, if you insist, but they'll really be better if stirred up a bit and sweetened with cream and sugar.
And you see, the problem with a paper proposal, and the reason why I detest the words almost as much as "annotated bibliography," is that a paper proposal wants to know what direction you are going to go for the rest of your paper.
"It's just an overview," says my advisor, but the simple fact is, (perhaps I'm doing this wrong), I haven't the faintest idea where my paper is headed until I've immersed myself in the research for a while and come up with about eight possible directions and then researched some more and followed a tangent and scribbled down a whole bunch of ideas very illegibly around the sides of a paper and tried to write an overall proposal or thesis at least three times. Then, and only then, may I be able to present you with something like an adequate picture of what I want to write about.
Which still, by the way, may not be entirely the same as what I end up writing about.
I understand that research should have direction, but for some reason, my head insists on thinking about things backwards.
I never start out with one definitive question to answer in research, because I find that the problem is that somebody has inevitably already answered it. And since quoting the entirety of somebody else's text is, it would seem, academically discouraged, I am always left with the sad state of an answered question and a defunct paper topic.
Call me a true child of the liberal arts, but if I wanted answers to my questions, I'd have studied math! (Well, and if I'd ever learned my multiplication tables.)
No - what I want are not answers, even, but connections. I don't want just answers - I want new ways to think about other people's answers. I want to raise questions, not answers. I'd like to think that I can make people think about other people's thoughts...which is really just a long-winded way of saying I like to suggest slightly fractious and unorthodox ideas, throw them carelessly out on the winds of dialogue, and see who bites, and how hard, while I stuff my face with candy bars in the corner.
But, in order to do this, I find that I must know other people's ideas first, and in sufficient quantity to begin yanking them out of their respective books (or fields or traditions or disciplines or specialties) and tying them together into something that approximates a decent picture of what History was actually like...every bit as complicated and inter-disciplinary and non-bullet-pointed as our modern world.
I can give you a page of proposal before my research...if you want me to make it up, and turn in something completely different.
But, if you want to know what I really think about something complex, in academics or in life, give me time, and let me play outside the box for a while.
When I've bunny-trailed and false-started and flipped out and panned out, when I've stained the margins with every kind of commentary and crumb, then I will be able to tell you what research I am going to use, what more I need to read, and what I am really going to write about.
I cannot have thoughts on a schedule.
But I will have thoughts eventually. Adequate stewing, adequate brewing.
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